Overview

Overview

Written by leading authorities, the volume can be considered a standard work on seventeenth-century English social history.

A tribute to the work of Keith Wrightson, Remaking English Society re-examines the relationship between enduring structures and social change in early modern England. Collectively, the essays in the volume reconstruct the fissures and connections that developed both within and between social groups during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Focusing on the experience of rapid economic and demographic growth and on related processes of cultural diversification, the contributors address fundamental questions about the character of English society during a period of decisive change. Prefaced by a substantial introduction which traces the evolution of early modern social history over the last fifty years, these essays (each of them written by a leading authority) not only offer state-of-the-art assessments of the historiography but also represent the latest research on a variety of topics that have been at the heart of the development of 'the new social history' and its cultural turn: gender relations and sexuality; governance and litigation; class and deference; labouring relations, neighbourliness and reciprocity; and social status and consumption.

STEVE HINDLE is W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Reviews

This is a strong and coherent collection of essays. . . . In their analytical sophistication and their archival richness, the essays here demonstrate Keith Wrightson's deep impact on early modern British social history. RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

An important contribution to the historiography of early modern England and an appropriate acknowledgement of the brilliance of Keith Wrightson. LANDSCAPE HISTORY